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Jan 21, 2011
This week's theme
Verbs

This week's words
intromit
remonstrate
execrate
betide
expostulate

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

expostulate

PRONUNCIATION:
(ik-SPOS-chuh-layt)

MEANING:
verb intr.: To reason earnestly with someone in order to dissuade.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin expostulare (to require), from ex- (intensive prefix) + postulare (to demand). Ultimately from the Indo-European root prek- (to ask), which is also the source of words such as pray, precarious, deprecate, postulate, and precatory. Earliest documented use: 1548.

USAGE:
"'Oh come on,' I expostulated, a shade too loudly. 'That's not fair.'"
Sarabjit Jagirdar; Amar's Little Secret; Hindustan Times (New Delhi, India); Feb 7, 2010.

See more usage examples of expostulate in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it. -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)

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